July 2 - 5, 2021
Los Angeles, CA

Academic Program

A special line-up of talks and lectures on Japanese comics and animation by leading scholars from colleges and universities around the world.

Connecting Scholars with Fans

Our Academic Program, the "AX Anime and Manga Studies Symposium," is a special programming track of academic lectures and panels on topics related to anime, manga, and Japanese culture. Presented by scholars from around the world, the Anime and Manga Studies Symposium as first introduced in 2011 and has featured over fifty different speakers from more than thirty universities and colleges. With subjects varying from the development of the anime industry to common themes in anime writing, the Anime and Manga Symposium is a unique chance to delve deeper into the world of Japanese pop culture.

Check out the schedule (when available) to find out more about the academic program. Participating sessions are marked with a red book symbol or simply tagged as "Academic."

Please stay tuned for more information about the AX 2019 Call for Papers, which invites proposals for plenary addresses, presentations, and panel discussions.

Past Programs

2017

Anime fandom in the United States was born at a tense moment in the relationship between the United States and Japan. To many Americans it seemed that, decades after the end of World War II, Japan’s newfound global economic power would challenge the U.S.-dominated international system. Popular publications foretold the “Danger from Japan,” or the “Coming War with Japan.” But a national “Japan Panic” was not the only way Americans encountered Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout the country, in local places like automobile factories and anime fan clubs, Americans engaged with Japanese culture in new and transformative ways.

Andrew McKevitt teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of U.S. foreign relations, the postwar United States, modern Russia, and modern Japan. He received a Ph.D. from Temple University, and previously served as the Hollybush Fellow in Cold War History at Rowan University and as a visiting assistant professor of history at Philadelphia University

Special Guest Lecture

Before Ghibli was Ghibli: How and Anime Studio is Born

Rayna Denison
Senior Lecturer, Art, Media and American Studies
University of East Anglia

Studio Ghibli may have become Japan’s most important and successful animation brand, but its early significance is far more debatable. To challenge current perceptions of Ghibli’s dominance of animation in Japan, I revisit the early history of Studio Ghibli, and examine the industrial and promotional discourses circulating at the time of Studio Ghibli’s formation. In doing so, I argue for a corrective analysis of Studio Ghibli’s brand significance. Even the most powerful of anime studio brands can have humble beginnings, and that we need to view anime brand construction as a piecemeal, historical process, rather than as an ahistorical constant.

Anime and Manga Studies in Japan

Reinventing the Cityscape: Anime Pilgrimage and the Transformation of Collective MemoryProject Animatexture: A Research Group for the Study of Anime, History and Society (Ritsumeikan University)
–Yoshiya Makita, Yuri Kojima, Hiroki Tamai, Nao Suzuki, and Hideki Morita

Special Guest Presentation

This presentation confronts the opposing musical narratives of the Rurouni Kenshin anime and live-action films using musical semiotics combined with comparative iconographic-aural analysis to unpack this heroic discourse of the Meiji samurai, arguing that the overt musical differences reflect a shifting conceptualization of Japanese gender politics across the 1990s and 2010s.Rising Stars of Anime and Manga Studies

Fanservice in Anime: A Continuum from Complicity to Critique
–James Pyke (University of Michigan)

2016

Keynote Address

Anime for Aspiring Filmmakers: Lessons from the USC School of Cinematic Arts
-Prof. Ellen Seiter (University of Southern California)

Why should American film students pay attention to anime? In the AX Anime and Manga Studies Symposium Keynote Address, Prof. Ellen Seiter, the University of Southern California Stephen K. Nenno Endowed Chair in Television Studies, shares her thoughts on the distinctive visual, dramatic and narrative language of Japanese animation in film and television, and on what aspiring filmmakers can learn from anime directors such as the late Satoshi Kon, especially in the contemporary environment of digital production and distribution.

Words, Scripts, Implications: Creating Meaning in Anime and Manga

Sounding Out the Pictures: Manga Sound Effects, Meanings, and Translation
-Andrew John Smith (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
This talk looks to discuss the unique world of comic sound effects, specifically those found in manga. Although many readers may not think about them directly, sound effects affect their ability to read, enjoy, and understand graphic texts—meaning that an inability to understand them can stop understanding, and changing them can potentially cause a disastrous misreading. Sound effects can carry just as much meaning, weight, and import as the dialogue and art they accompany, and this discussion looks to introduce that concept and expand the scope of what can be studied when it comes to graphic works.

Can the Pop-Idol Speak?: The Role of Voice in Satoshi Kon’s Films
-John Ballarino (Bridgewater State University)
Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue is a film about identity: the conflict of the film is driven by the divide that exist between how people perceive the main character, Mima, as a commercial commodity and a woman, and in turn how Mima perceives herself. I analyze how this is portrayed symbolically throughout the film through the motif of Mima’s voice, developing being owned and sold by others to being entirely her own. This provides a useful approach to better understand the outside influences influencing her identity and development as a character, revealing a strong criticism of the expectations of women in a patriarchal society.

Drawing Lines between Boys and Girls: What do we Mean by “Shōnen” and “Shōjo”?
-Mia Lewis (Stanford University)
While manga combines image and text, it divides boys and girls. In bookstores in Japan manga is divided primarily by the gender of the target audience, often separated onto different floors in larger bookstores. This reflects the gendered division that begins in manga zasshi [comics magazines] and continues through the media mix chain. This talk will briefly overview how this distinction has been discussed in previous scholarship, and shifted over the years. This talk will also introduce preliminary results from my ongoing research on the divisions between these genres. One of these research projects examines how the reader’s sections in shōjo manga proscribe the ideal work to readers and aspiring artists to a far greater extent than their shōnen equivalents. The other examines formalist distinctions between contemporary shōnen and shōjo manga in order to explore what it means when we open a comic, glance at it, and declare it to be one or the other.

Reflections of a Changing Japan in Modern Japanese Visual Culture

Salaryman at the Black Factory: Absurdist Loserdom and Labor Politics in Osomatsu-san
-Danielle Choi (University of Southern California) and Calvin Choi
This presentation investigates the archetype of the “loser” in Osomatsu-san, the 2015 anime reboot of the well-known Osomatsu-kun (1966-67, 88-89) franchise. Tensions inherent in the image of the salaryman—simultaneously a signifier of socio-economic stability, yet also of soulless drudgery—paradoxically position it as a personally unfulfilling career, and also a desirable marker of traditional (masculine) success that is no longer attainable for a young workforce in Japan’s late capitalist global economy. Osomatsu-san’s structure and content preclude any possibility of financial or personal success for its characters, offering a revealing critique of contemporary labor politics in a post-industrial Japan.

Fantastic Damage – Architecture, Anime, Destruction, and Tokyo
-Evan Jones
Of all of the Earth’s major cities, perhaps none have undergone more cataclysmic changes in a shorter time period than Tokyo. Earthquakes, modernization, firebombings, and urban renewal have changed the three dimensional Tokyo just as much – if not more – than giant robots, angels, or magical girls have changed a myriad number of two dimensional versions. By analyzing the city as both a historical entity and as a narrative setting, Evan Jones will explore Tokyo as a cityscape of limitless flexibility, one which creators and visionaries bend and manipulate at will to satisfy various wants and needs. This presentation will use a number of visuals to highlight various animated interpretations of Tokyo with an emphasis on important representational shifts.

Good Eating and Social Meetings: The Semiotics of Food in Goro Miyazaki’s From Up on Poppy Hill
-Verna Zafra (University of Guam)
Depictions of making and consuming food have been prominent throughout the history of Japanese animation and Japanese comics.. This presentation will overview development, role, and significance that food plays in anime/manga, and the place of Japanese media in the emerging academic field of “food studies”. In Goro Miyazaki’s From Up on Poppy Hill, food can be interpreted as a sign that carries various meanings, which in turn underscore and facilitate specific themes, such as family, camaraderie in the community, and role fulfillment.

Examining and Questioning Japan’s Place in the World

On This Side of the Gate: Politics and Geopolitics in Contemporary Anime
-Paul S. Price
Gate presents a right-wing view of Japan by combining an irruption of a fantasy world into Japan with the real world of the Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) and Japanese politics and geopolitics. Gate is a tale of the vindication of three underdogs: Japan, the JSDF, and otakus/otaku culture. Japan maybe a small country surrounded by more powerful nations. The JSDF maybe under funded and under suspicion at home and viewed as a joke by other nations. Otaku culture may not be viewed as exemplary or even entirely adult. In Gate, however, all three are more than conquerors.

The Real Limit on the Cult of Speed: Attack on Titan’s Ambivalent (Anti-)Fascism
-Verna Zafra (University of Guam)
Attack on Titan’s engagement with the narrative and visual conventions of Japanese ultra-nationalist manga and anime combines an enthusiastic engagement with these elements, on their own terms and with the full strength of their appeal, with the violent interruption of these elements, their foundational myths being torn apart in an impossible blur of teeth. Situating this analysis alongside an overview of the ideological characteristics of Japanese ultra-nationalism and its history in manga/anime from the 1960s and onwards, this key to reading AoT presents insights into the character of these phenomenon in Japan’s animation and comics tradition and its political imaginary.

Ghosts of February 26: The Officers Plot and the Keitai Revolution in Eden of the East and Gatchaman Crowds
-Jordan Marshak
On February 26, 1936 a group in the Imperial Japanese Military calling themselves the Young Officers attempted an uprising in Tokyo and a series of assassinations, calling on the the people and the Emperor to lead a “Showa restoration” to end economic inequality through the abolition of capitalism and corrupt party politics. Taking inspiration from the shishi of the Meiji restoration, its low status samurai leaders, they belong to a rich tradition of Japanese radicals who have attempted, armed with unfailing moral clarity, to use symbolic violence to bring about social transformation. This talk discusses two recent TV anime (Eden of the East and Gatchaman Crowds) that engage with this tradition and the memory of the Young Officers as a potential model for addressing the many social crises of post-bubble Japan and wrestle with its continuing legacy and importance while ultimately endorsing different methods of radical action.

50 Years of Anime in America, 50 Years of American Anime Fans

What You Watch Is What You Are?: Early Anime and Manga Fandom in the United States
-Andrea Horbinski (University of California, Berkeley)
How did anime and manga first enter U.S. fandom, and why were people watching “Japanimation”? Using materials from the Fred Patten collection, this paper explores early anime and manga fandom in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. The problems that early fans faced were similar to those faced by Japanese audiences encountering English-language movies in the 1910s and 1920s, and the fans who watched anime in these years did so for similar reasons: anime offered them content they wanted mixed with appealing foreign-ness. The practices these fans pioneered eventually gave rise to the U.S. anime and manga industry.

Anime in the US in the 1990’s and 2000’s: Unauthorized Distribution as a Catalyst for Evolution
-Allison Hawkins
Whether it was a copied VHS tape or a fansubbed video, chances are that you or someone you know has viewed anime through unauthorized means of distribution. With a consumer base formed partially by fans acting as creators and distributors, how has the anime market continued to grow? How do these fan distributors coexist with corporate distributors in an expanding market? This talk explores the way in which unauthorized distribution played a role in creating the current market of anime fandom and what that history means for the market today.

Persuasion or Pleasure: Cosplayers’ Use of Social Media as a Rhetorical Tool
-Caitlin Postal (California State University, Northridge)
This talk focuses on the fan practice of cosplay through a rhetorical analysis of cosplayers’ use of social media when building their online persona. Through personal interviews conducted with cosplayers and a textual analysis of their social media posts, we can see how Cicero’s three offices of rhetoric (instruction, pleasure, persuasion) work in the minds and pages of well-known cosplayers. From there, let’s consider how social media affects the performative nature of cosplay.

Special Session: Using Anime and Manga in Education

In this session, three practicing educators provide responses to the question of how manga, anime, and other Japanese popular culture texts can be incorporated in a formal classroom setting. Old and new challenges to educators color this question – proscribed academic standards that limit teacher autonomy, barriers to students who struggle with traditional forms of literacy, and persistent conceptions of gender that reinforce certain types of readings of these texts. The session will review strategies to overcome these problems as well as engage the audience to consider how using Japanese popular culture texts can redefine gender, literacy, and ultimately what it means to “read”.

The evolution of the “Robot Anime” and “Magical Girl” genres since the 1960s has led to an expansion of target audience beyond their initial toy-sale-oriented origins and today the demarcation lines are blurred between the two. Looking at anime series today, we often find aspects of one in the other. Using the examples of the SF fandom controversy surrounding the original Gundam series, the development of the Macross franchise, and the coming-of-age of shojo manga with Hagio Moto and Takemiya Keiko, we will attempt to describe the various cultural and social factors surrounding how the requisites for anime genres have been maintained throughout the last five decades, while narrative complexity, visual grammar and media literacy have developed the core of the surrounding anime fandom culture.

Special Guest Lecture

Anime and Manga in Hollywood – and What Happens Next

Prof. Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)

In a fascinating look at the interrelated history of Japanese manga/anime and Hollywood since the Meiji period through to World War II and up to the present day – and even to into the future, Prof. Northrop Davis will bring his extensive experience in the business and artistic intersection between manga/anime and Hollywood to talk about the latest projects in Hollywood live-action adaptations of anime/manga. Which ones have a good chance of working? What others might not work so well. The media industries in the United States and Japan are now accelerating into new forms of hybridization that will drive much of future storytelling entertainment. Drawing on original interviews with top creators in these fields and other research that he used when writing Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood, just published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Academic, Prof. Davis will show how to use this knowledge creatively to shape the future of global narrative storytelling, including through the educational system.

Applying Auteur, Critical, and Feminist Theory to Anime

Adaptation and Evolution in Japanese Visual Culture
-Amanda Kennell (University of Southern California)
Contemporary media production methods have been theorized in two similar ways, as transmedia storytelling and as the media mix, by Henry Jenkins and Otsuka Eiji, respectively. This talk introduces adaptation as a way to reconsider how stories come to be (re)told and suggests how art can evolve through adaptation using Yamamoto Sayo’s Lupin the 3rd: A Woman Called Mine Fujiko (2012) as a case study.

Anime Archives: Digital Curation and Scholarly Perspectives
-Johnathan Lau
This presentation explores “alternative” archival spaces (“surfaces”) of Japanese animation and the historical intersections between scholars and fans, shifting ethics, means of viewing and distribution. It proposes that careful consideration of these trends benefits not only fan studies, but studies of the works themselves in an evolving technological context. Here certain parallels are highlighted between comments on streaming video and file-sharing websites, and the tradition of colophons on Sino-Japanese handscrolls. The talk then proceeds to discuss the unstable nature of these “anime archives,” extending this instability to the notion of the digital archive. A case study of the file-sharing website BakaBT.me is explored alongside theories of a utopian “archival commons.”
Special Guest Lecture

Anime Archives: Digital Curation and Scholarly Perspectives-Mia Lewis (Stanford University)The global trade and the advent of the Internet have turned local cultural products into easily accessible entertainment worldwide, including comics, cartoons, dramas, films, video games, etc. These products undergo a wide array of different processes of translation and localization on their way to foreign audiences — from subtitles, to dubs, to edits, to full remakes, and everywhere in between – demonstrating how profit driven corporations and fan culture intersect in translation practices. Based on a 2015 course taught at Stanford University, this talk looks at how Japanese and Korean popular culture can be used to teach translation, to link theory to practice, and to challenge students to critically examine their own consumption habits.

2015

Keynote Address:

Mukokuseki: Teaching Anime in a Borderless World
David M. Desser (Professor Emeritus, Cinema Studies, University of Illinois)

Special Presentation

Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood
Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)

Special Guest Lectures

New Directions in the Japanese Animation Industry
- Renato Rivera Rusca (Meiji University)The Structure of the Japanese Animation Business
- Mariko Koizumi (Kyoto Seika University)

Roundtable Discussion:

Anime and Manga in the Classroom: Teaching Students, and Teaching TeachersChair:Brent Allison (University of North Georgia), Kathryn Hemmann (George Mason University), Alex Leavitt (University of Southern California), and Andrew John Smith (Indiana University of Pennsylvania).

Panel Sessions:

Critical Approaches to Japanese Animation and Comics

The Beautiful End of the World: Eschatologies of the Bishojo
–Kathryn Hemmann (George Mason University)

The State as a Serial killer: Death in the Name of Prosperity and the Necropolitics of Citizenship in Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit
– Bo Luengsuraswat

Special Guest Presentation:Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)

WeMakeManga.com – Education in art and creative writing using styles and technologies from Japanese sequential art

Building Bridges through Individual Texts

Remixing History: The Semiotics of race and Nationality in Samurai Champloo
– Laurel Foote-Hudson ((University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Alienated from Her Emotions: Conveying Interaction between Character Psychology and the Science Fictional in 7 Billion Needles
– Carl Li (Leiden University)

What do Anime Fans Do, Why and How?

Even a Monkey can Cnderstand Fan Activism: Political Speech, Artistic Expression, and a Public for the Japanese doujin Community
– Alexander Leavitt (University of Southern California)
– Andrea Horbinski (University of California, Berkeley)

Artifacts of Sound: Sound Effects and Their Impact on Fan and Genre Community
– Evan Jones

2011

At that point, Prof. Condry was already working on the book that he would publish in 2013 as The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story, and he reflected on some of his experiences at AX in the book.

“Cool Japan”: Soft Power in the 21st Century
– Kukhee Choo (Tulane University)

The Guyver and Societies of Control
– Gino Zarrinfar (University of Hawaii Manoa)

Open Session

Real Ninjas make AMV’s! Anime through the Eyes of Vidders
– Samantha Close (University of California, Irvine)

The author presented a revised version of this paper as a part of the University of California, Irvine Visual Studies Student/Faculty Colloquium, and published a further revision, entitled ‘Popular culture through the eyes, ears, and fingertips of fans: Vidders, anime music video editors, and their sources’ as a chapter in Sampling Media (Oxford University Press, 2014)